Summary+of+the+article

Impact of Curriculum Modifications on Access to the General Education Curriculum for Students With Disabilities. Summary by Sabrina, Frenda just edited and APA format. This investigational non-randomized research study aimed to identify the effectiveness of curriculum modification for students with learning disabilities on their classroom behavior, academic engagement, content understanding and retention, while receiving instruction in a general education classroom setting. The population sample consisted of 45 students with disabilities. The sample was collected in the Midwest region of the United States. The student demographics are 29 male and 16 female, with their ages and grades ranging from 14.2-19.2 years, and 9th – 12th, respectively. The students with disabilities composites were: 34 received special education services under the learning disability category, 7 were served under the Other health Impairment category ( which included students with attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), 3 received special education services under the emotional and/or behavioral category and 1 was served under the Autism category. Participants were non-randomly selected to participate in the study by special education administrators within their schools. One common criterion for the students was that they had to be receiving special education services and receiving instruction on core content areas in the general education classrooms. Twenty nine general education teacher participants were involved in the study. Gender composition was 13 male, 16 female with age and educational preparedness ranged from 23-49 years of age, and Bachelor to Graduate Degrees respectively in general education. Fourteen special education teachers were also involved in the study. The instrumentation of this study was the Mainstream Version of the Code for Instructional Structure and Student Academic response (MS_CISSAR). It focused on an individual student as an observer targeted and structured the collection of data. The methodology used was momentary time sampling. The variables used were classroom ecology, teacher behavior and student behavior. The test –retest reliabilities of this instrument averaged .85 out of 1.0. Prior to the observation, data was collected from the teachers about the day’s lesson and activities. Curriculum modifications were in place and included reading on demand, extended time, peer support, etc for the students observed. The data collector would then observe the students activities and behavior during classroom instruction for a total of 30 minutes. Multilevel regression was used to investigate the degree to which curriculum modifications directly predicted or affected the student or teachers behaviors. The findings of this study supported the researchers’ prediction of the importance of curriculum modifications in that there was positive student academic response to the modifications. These findings were most observed when students were engaged in tasks. Without the modifications present, students were likely to engage in behaviors that competed in active engagement such as, looking around, noncompliance, talking inappropriately etc. Although the prediction was validated by this research study, it is important to note that limitations of the study included a non randomized sample population, lack of diversity in the sample, the lack of IQ data for the students and the instrumentation used all of which could question the validation of the results.